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Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Why the Old West is at War with Itself?

“One
of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up
being governed by your inferiors”.

Plato

Budapest, Hungary, 21
March. Plato’s Republic is in many ways a treatise against political extremism.
There is an argument to be made that the ‘extremist’ Great Revolt against the
Old West’s liberal, mainstream elite began here in Hungary. Long suspicious of
Brussels control-freakery the 2015 migration crisis saw a full-on revolt from
Viktor Orban’s government and much of the Hungarian population against EU fiat.
Since then the West has seen Brexit and the election of President Trump. And
yet, on the face of it at least, last week’s Dutch elections suggest that the ‘populist
wave’ (whatever that is) might just be on the wane. Think again. So, why is the
West at war with itself?

Sad bustard that I am I
spent much of yesterday afternoon glued to CNN watching the testimony of FBI
Director, James Coney and NSA Director, Admiral James Rogers. To be honest, I
had tuned in to hear about how Russia had allegedly conducted a sustained campaign
against the 2016 US presidential elections. Instead, I was treated to several
hours of absurdly partisan questioning that had little or nothing to do with
the purported mission of the House Intelligence Committee; to understand more
about the FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign and President Putin’s Russia.

What was far more
illuminating was the commentary thereafter. Democrats tried to suggest that
President Trump is all but guilty of some form of treason. Republicans, by and
large, painted the testimony as an attempt to smear the President. A few commentators
suggested it was a good day for the American constitution because checks and balances
were being seen to work, whilst others said the only winner was Putin. All avoided
the real question; how on earth did America, and by extension, the Old West get
into this mess?

To answer that poser one
has to travel closer to home – the Netherlands. The Dutch campaign was
fascinating. You have to hand it to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He is the
ultimate bendy-rubber politician. To see off a challenge from the hard-right
Geert Wilders liberal Rutte tacked hard right in his campaign, at one point
telling Dutch Muslims effectively to ‘get normal or get out’, on another
occasion forcibly expelling one of President Erdogan’s ministers from the
Netherlands, a most un-Dutch act.

Rutte is nothing if not smart.
He realised a fundamental truism (tortology?); if the mainstream do not deal
with the legitimate concerns of vast numbers of perfectly reasonable citizens who
fear the big change they are living at some point out of desperation they will look
to the had right and hard left of the political spectrum. In other words, the
reason there is a crisis in the centre of Old West politics is because for too
long the centre has been incompetent. The good news is that the moment a
mainstream politician such as Rutte, or Theresa May in the UK, appears (and I
stress appears) to deal with the big issues voters stream back to the centre.

Let me be Euro-parochial
for a moment. The three main political issues in Europe are mass immigration,
money, and who actually holds power. For years the mainstream has hidden behind
the Blairite myth that globalisation is an unstoppable force and that people
must embrace it or be engulfed by it. This is nonsense. The Great Revolt
happened for three reasons: the mainstream liberal elite failed to understand
just how deep national identity runs; they also failed to grasp just how strong
the simple idea that in a democracy one should not only know who decides policy,
but actually have the chance to vote directly for them; and because the elite
itself in Europe became a caste apart from the people.

The Old West is the home
of the old democracies. Democracies need effective centrists to preserve effective
democracy. Whatever the short-term allure of the political fringes at times of
stress, such as now, the sheer complexity of the world today is that simple
prescriptions are as unlikely to succeed, as the pie-in-the-sky theorists who
have driven the centre to political self-destruction.

It is not centrism per se
that is needed, but effective centrism that meets the concerns of a majority of
people whilst helping them at the same time prepare them for the future. That
means in turn politicians willing to re-embrace patriotism (dirty word amongst
much of the elite), globalism, and realism at one and the same time, and strike
a politically acceptable balance between them. In practice that means recognition
of the importance of immigration for economic progress, but clear, demonstrable,
and effective limits on it. It means fiscal and monetary policies that enriches
people, not impoverishes them. The Euro has been an unmitigated disaster
precisely because it is an elite political project that defies economic logic
and which can only survive at the expense of the very people it is meant to
support. It means recognition that for most people the nation-state remains the
core of identity, and that they expect it to be the focus of democracy, security,
and defence. Finally, it means serving the needs of the majority as well as protecting
minorities.

The inference from
yesterday’s testimony on the Hill was that President Putin is waging a successful
war against the Old democracies. That is wrong. The Old West and an out of
touch mainstream elite simply make it too easy for him to cause mischief. Plato
would certainly have understood that. After all, the Old West is Athens, whilst
Putin is Sparta. That begs a further question. Where is the next Rome?

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.